Get out of the landing craft! Cover yourself, call up your men, take them out of the beach, that´s the idea you can´t stop repeating to yourself. You shake off the sand of your face and take another peek of those bunkers up there in the crest, wondering again how to get out of it. The clock keeps ticking and time flies! The weak beachhead depends on your actions either to consolidate it or to be rejected by the enemy, tossed back to the sea, something that would make the Atlantikwall impregnable.

You have no support; your only option is to look for the faces of the junior officers who are eagerly awaiting for your orders and begging to yourself not to break their confidence making a mistake.

The moment you´ve been waiting so long has arrived:

Lead your troops in combat facing an utter motivated and implacable enemy.

Take your men from the sands of Omaha Beach to the outskirts of Saint-Lò in bloody combats that revive the main events that took place in the Normandy theater.

Achieve the objectives and tasks assigned, and trigger...

The Beginning of the End.

Normandy, The Beginning of the End is the 4th game on the Nico Eskubi & JC Cebrian's War Storm Series.

The previous games (Paths to Hell, La Bataille de France 1940, and A las Barricadas!) were published under Compass Games trademark. Now the serie has moved to Draco Ideas. At this new stage we will try to offer the same or better game components quality.

We can advance you that we are going to land on Kickstarter on January!

We'll keep you informed and give you more details about the new War Storm Series title.

We have decided to start a series of articles in which we will delve into some of the units that take part in Normandy, The Beginning of the End, as well as to describe aspects of the game that you will find in this new installment of the War Storm Series.

The War Storm Series titles recreate combat situations at the tactical level, emphasizing the role of the officers in the battlefield and how their leadership have a real impact in the units´ morale, another key aspect implemented in the game.

Below, you can see a couple of examples depicting two officers, one per side:

Captain Ryman belongs to Company Fox, an Airborne Infantry unit.

On the other hand, Sargent Stichtenoth is an NCO from Company Anton, an Infantry German unit.

For those familiar with previous titles of the saga, you may notice that we have maintained a common structure and a well-known lay-out for these markers. Let´s review them:

In the top, you may find the national flag and the rank plus the name of the officer, being the latter a detail to merely increase the atmosphere but with no real effect in the game. Notice than even though some of the ranks depicted may not be an officer, for gaming purposes, it will be considered as such, regardless the rank stated on the counter. That is to say, it´s more related to a concept of leadership rather than to stripes.

To the right you may see a lateral strip with a color that will vary depending on the unit type. In the examples above, both officers are taken from Infantry units.

In this strip, you will see a graphic of the rank and immediately below a yellow-colored figure, which represents the officer´s morale value. This value will be his company´s morale too. In subsequent articles, we will provide more details and we will broaden in what circumstances during a battle a morale check must be performed.

Just below the morale value, you may see the officer´s movement factor. In both examples it´s 5 and the type of movement set is by foot.

A portray of the protagonist is also printed along with their Company´s letter. There you can see two values printed, the leadership and command range.

The leadership factor, represented in a yellow-colored circle, it´s a modifier that adds a bonus to all the platoons within the officer´s commands range.

The command range depicts the distance to which the officer is able to effectively communicate to the platoons that are part of his Company. Therefore, in both examples these officers may issue orders up to 2 hexes away. This implies that once you activate an officer, all the platoons that are within range will be automatically active to obey the officer´s orders.

With this we will finish this entry, anticipating that in the following developer log we will go into details about what happens if an officer falls in battle and how this concept it´s implemented in WSS: Normandy the Beginning of the End.

We are going to describe today one of the most important concepts in the game: Morale.

A soldier, in the clamor of battle, is not that perfect slaughter machine with a total lack of feeling that we often see on movies and videogames.

They are human beings that rely on their mental strength and on their unit´s cohesion to commit dangerous tasks, overcoming their fears in a hostile environment such as a battlefield.

In War Storm Series this reality is implemented by several mechanisms:

First, every Company as a single entity, has its own morale value. This value will have to be checked in situations in where the soldiers have to face frantic moments, such as:

- One of the platoons is eliminated. - The officer in command falls. - The Company suffers casualties after an armored assault.

If a unit doesn´t pass this roll check, you will have to deal with a delicate situation on the battlefield: the Company, depending on the level of failure, may withdraw or even might become routed, and thus it will lose the combat effectiveness.

On the other hand, the morale of a platoon it´s equal to its parent company except for the fact that the leadership value of the officer in command may be only added if he is within command range.

When must a platoon do an individual morale check?

Among others, to become active if it´s out of command, i.e., out of its officer´s command range. In this situation, the platoon won´t be activated automatically with its officer and the rest of units that are within command range.

This depicts the tendency of units without a leader of staying under cover and avoiding taking risks.

This way, this allows you to activate during the Activation Phase, both, an officer and all his platoons within his command range and also individual units which may be out of range.

Command Range – the officer has a command range trait of 2. The farthest platoon will be out of command, and therefore it won´t get the officer´s leadership bonus and won´t become active either once the officer is activated.

Other situations in which is required to check a platoon´s morale is, for instance, to initiate an assault or to cross a barbed-wire area. If the check results in a failure, the platoon will finish the turn taking no action.

Obviously, the number of loses during the battle will also affect to the morale, and thus, you will soon learn how critical is every single GI on the battlefield in the War Storm Series.

Normandy, the beginning of the end and Alone in the Storm are now live at Kickstarter.

Normandy, “The Beginning of the End”, is the fourth installment in the War Storm Series (WSS), and precisely from today, Tuesday the 16th of January, you may reserve your copy.

Furthermore, at this campaign it is include Alone in the Storm an expansion pack that enables solo and cooperative games mode, implements fog of war and many other features. And most important, backwards compatible with previous titles of the saga (La Baitalle de France 1940, A Las Barricadas, Paths to Hell). You can buy both as a pack or this expansion pack separately as an addon.

You can get Normandy for $46 pledge level ($39 at early bird first 48 hours) or Normandy + Alone in the Storm for $85 pledge level ($79 at early bird first 48 hours).

We are so grateful! Normandy, the Beginning of the End and Alone in the Storm have been funded in only 4 hours. It´s such an achievement for a “grognard” game! But the journey has just begun. Stay tuned as we disclose the Stretch Goals we´ve been working on, most of them exclusive for backers. We also need your help to unlock all those Social Stretch Goals that are waiting for you!

We are in last 48 hours, and just couldn’t let so many backers, so much feedback and so much support go unrewarded. So, we want to give all of you who have backed this amazing project a GIFT.

We are going to unlock ALL stretch goals to $100,000 right now!

We are confident about unlocked the social stretch goals, but we still need your help to do it!

Furhtermore, we are really excited to announce that creators of "Normandy, The Beginning of the End” and Bart de Groot has teamed up to develop the VASSAL version of the game!The module, still under development, is almost ready to go. It features most of the common characteristics of a Vassal module and it also includes most of the game´s singularities, many of them automatized to allow a fluid experience with your friends online.

Spread the word, share, retweet, and like the posts so we can unlock all the social SGs too!

To quote Churchill "Never was so much owed by so few to do many". And, as such, a huge thanks from everyone on the War Storm Series team: Juan Carlos Cebrián, Nicolás Eskubi, José Manuel Moreno, Jaime Devesa, Javier Romero, Juan Manuel Sáenz, Sergio Rodríguez and of course Draco Ideas. We wanted to thank 1012 BACKERS for your support and for making it so a little piece of our hearts go out with each game that will now see the light of day because of this campaign.

But our job is still not quite finished. We expect send everything off to start production in June.

On the other side we would like to start a late pledge manager in June where we will ask for backers shipping details and the number of games and Add-Ons they wish to purchase. If you are interested you can join us at late plege!